Being a professional race car driver in the NASCAR Cup Series is not always the glamorous affair that fans assume. Chase Elliott spoke about how drivers get paid by teams for their work in a recent interview on the MeatEater Podcast Network. His explanations provided a fresh perspective on how money flows between the parties.
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First off, Elliott clarified that drivers are under contract with their teams. They aren’t treated quite the same as an employee in a multi-national corporation and don’t receive many of the human resource benefits that a regular old workman would. For instance, teams don’t even provide drivers with health insurance.
There are specialized companies that insure individuals in high risk sports such as stock car racing and drivers partner with them for insurance. The money for the same goes out of their personal pockets. A contract that a driver signs with his team might extend anywhere from two to five years. Shorter deals aren’t uncommon as seen in the case of Daniel Suarez recently.
When it comes to compensation, there’s no telling, common to every driver out there. Some have a base renumeration, some don’t. Some get paid a percentage of the race winnings, some don’t. But does all this mean that drivers aren’t employees of the organization that they drive for every weekend?
Elliott said, “I work for Hendrick Motorsports. So, I’m basically a contractor of Hendrick Motorsports. I work for them. Rick is my boss, and he pays me. You’re not just a freelance dude. I’m very much employed by HMS. But you are responsible for all the things you’re talking about, whether it is health insurance or that sort of thing.”
